Woodberry Wetlands, Stoke Newington

a beautiful image

Happy weekend

Nice shot of a nasty subject.

Hackney is no rural idyll or historic gem, certainly. But the lighting (if only we could have had it last week) impelled me to take it on my iPhone, not having brought a camera. Fifteen minutes after this was taken, the area (and we) got saturated in a monsoon-like downpour.

I owe my existence to Hackney, but my forebears wouldn't recognise it now.
How come you went out without a camera? Very dangerous thing to do.

Not one of the fore would recognise it now, true. Goldilocks, at least, had only three.

Because it was a club walk (basically a social event) from Wood Green to Stoke Newington (not the most beautiful of places), and the forecast today was for cloud and rain, and I didn't want my camera (which I thought I'd be very unlikely to use) to get wet.

They lived in the gloriously named Pigwell Path, so long erased that no-one knows quite where it was: somewhere near the Pigwell Brook, I guess, which seems to have been in central Hackney, so a little to the south-east of this carbunculation.

As I've said before, one should never rely on the BBC.

A View of Hackney Church from Pigwell
collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O767859/watercolour-matthews-c-h

Like most of London's lost villages, Hackney was probably as interesting, peaceful and lovely as it sounds. Pigwell Path appears still to have existed at least as late as 1905 though - discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/d4b3e787-09be-49e9-97a1-d40103211c24.

Yes, I noticed that. It's near the present Wilton Road.

I'm sure Ealing was very nice once upon a time.

Yes it was, until (like Hackney, though to a lesser degree, because parts of it are still relatively green) in the 19th and 20th century it became buried under bricks and mortar. But where in the World was not once nicer and more beautiful than it is today?

That's a rather cumbersome sentence, but I agree with what you're saying.